Why has Bing become my default search engine in Firefox 4?

I decided to write this post because ever since I upgraded to the full version of Firefox 4, I have become really frustrated with a key piece of browser behavior I am accustomed to.

Not everyone browses the same way, but I love Chrome and the fact that the address bar is also my search bar. For all my non-work related browsing I tend to use Chrome as I like its speed. Firefox 4 is fantastic too, don't get me wrong, but as amazing as Firebug is, it slows down browsing to the detriment of my user experience. You have to take the rough with the smooth I guess - both browsers have their benefits for my personal and work purposes.

Anyway, back to the search / address bar bit. I like this in Chrome, and in Firefox I browse the same way. I try not to use the search box as it takes up extra UI space, hence in both Chrome and Firefox I type a search term in the address bar, and bingo - the URL I type loads, or I get my Google search results for the term I entered. Or not, as the case may be...

After upgrading to Firefox 4, all of a sudden my results started returning in Bing. Bing? Bing! Now I don't have too much of an issue with Bing. I am sure it's a very good search engine. But I want Google. Google is my search engine of choice, so where did Bing come from?! I didn't install any Microsoft-related extensions or plugins, and after scouring every preference in Firefox and coming up fruitless, I returned to my reliable Google-standard search bar, and voila! The Mozilla support forum came to my rescue.

I'm not too certain what happened, but if anyone else has the same problems out there - here's what you have to do to return to the good old days:

In your address bar, type: about:config, then scroll down to keyword.URL when the config loads (after promising to be careful with the settings).

Right-click keyword.URL and select modify.

Paste the following into the panel that appears: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=

Close the tab and the World is right again!

Aaaaaaah, that feels better.